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Kayn isn't usually a fan of winter – the house is cold, which means he has to put on more clothing than he usually likes to wear, which means that people can't appreciate the hot body he earns the rest of the year. It's a concession he makes for the sake of his extremities, grudgingly.
But he's pretty sure that is overkill.
“...why do you have three different hats on?”
The giant ball of clothing standing in the entryway turns in a slow, clumsy circle – making little grunts of exertion the whole time. Kayn can barely make out the green bangs poking out from underneath hat number one to confirm that it actually is the little idiot he assumed it must be.
There's a muffled grunt that sounds like it might've been “Yone” from somewhere near the scarf-swaddled mouth, which explains everything and nothing.
“Ah-huh...” Kayn shuffles across the tile until he's close enough to pull at some of the layers, of which there are many, and raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Yone wanted you to steam yourself like a holiday ham?”
The next muffled mumbles are utterly indecipherable, but the mitten clad hands that scrabble to free the house's biggest mouth aren't particularly effective at removing obstacles.
“Hang on,” Kayn sighs as he unwinds the top scarf and dips his fingers into the second one enough to tug it under Ezreal's chin, “there... what were you grumbling about?”
Ezreal huffs, grumpy and pink-cheeked like he's been in a sauna. “Yone said I couldn't go out into the snow unless I dressed for the weather, and then Phel and Sett wrapped me up like this, and now I can't even bend down to put my boots on.”
“The snow?”
He hadn't even realized it had snowed enough to stick, it's been miserably cold for the last week and a half but there hasn't been anything to show for it except chapped lips and frozen toes.
“Yeah, there were big flakes! I saw them from my window and I was gonna run outside to play in it, but Yone caught me.”
Ezreal looks equally cute and like a moron as he pouts in his mountain of clothes, arms puffed out at his sides like a toddler in a bulky snowsuit... probably about the same height as one. Not to mention, if it just started snowing there's no way there's actually enough on the ground for any 'playing' to happen. Kayn wanders to the front door to check out the peephole just in case there actually has been a flash blizzard that warrants all of that.
There is maybe – maybe – an inch and a half. Two at best. He's seen thicker snow coverage on toilet tanks at Draven's parties.
He risks a glance back at the sweaty but hopeful marshmallow of knitwear behind him.
“Not a whole lot yet.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ez laughs, half-flapping his barely mobile arms. “This is great! I never got to go out in this much snow as a kid!”
It makes Kayn's chest clench just a little. Makes him think about Zed pulling him around on a beat up orange sled across barely crunchy grass and making awful golems made of as much mud as snow. How excited he'd been to play in it, even though they never quite got snow like on TV, and Zed's mother-henning about his pink nose and refusal to keep his jacket on.
“Alright, princess,” Kayn scoops Ezreal's sparkly snow boots from the doorway before bullying him onto the bench by the door, “Give me five minutes to get dressed and we'll make a whole afternoon of it.”
He wishes he could capture the way the pathetic little gremlin beams at him – and the way he trips down the front stairs because he can't bend his knees. He does manage to get a picture of his pink nose and crinkled eyes next to the ugliest SnowRhaast ever made, and an imprint of a particularly round snow angel in the hardly two inches of snow.
Maybe the rest of the season might not be so awful.
